""Lean Thinking" has dominated product development and project management for over a decade. Now, however, a six-year study by MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program led by Michael Cusumano and Kentaro Nobeoka finds that, in order to dramatically improve product portfolios, Toyota and other leading companies are moving beyond single-project management on which lean thinking is based. Drawing on a data base of 210 automobile products and detailed case studies from Toyota, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, Renault, and Fiat, the authors demonstrate how product development teams can share engineers and key common components but retain separate designers to maintain distinctive product features. The result: multi-project management has brought these companies huge savings in development and production costs." "Cusumano and Nobeoka's findings will be required reading for every company that makes more than one product."--Jacket.

1.Introduction: Beyond "Lean" in Product Development -- 2. The Toyota Benchmark: Multi Project Development Centers -- 3. Organizing Product Development in the World Auto Industry -- 4. Strategies for Product Development and Multiple Projects -- 5. Multi Project Strategies and Project Performance -- 6. Multi Project Strategies and Company Performance -- 7. Organizational Requirements for Effective Multi Project Management -- 8. Implications and Lessons for Managers.